Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin dropped from En

[sixtyandaquarter]

My text books - or at least in the classes I went to - mentioned the camps, and how it affected not just Japanese but many different other countries that got grouped together with Japan. It also mentioned the bombings killed mostly civilians, and listed only 10 - 5% as being military.

They mentioned slavery in Canada and England, but how it was put out before the US did it. Mine kind of mentioned a lot of things, and pretty much fits the basic encyclopedia. Only thing was when Clinton was on his second term, mine still listed Reagan as president...

Like I said in an earlier post, trim the fat and teach what really matters. Forget the names and the dates - those are important, and not just for scope - but let's worry more about why and how for a change, and put the rest on the back burner. History class needs to reverse how it's taught.
As stated in an earlier post, I can tell you who was involved in what, and occasionally the year - but I was never taught why or how. If I was taught why or how, I'd still know who, and I'd still be able to say I'd have the same knowledge of dates - but I'd be better off.

 

[kaze950]

Wasn't the point of the atomic bomb to kill civilians, though? Its not like a city would only have military in it.

 

[arcthemonkey]

(I tried to post this earlier, but the forum died on me)


Tdata, thanks for giving me the opportunity to prove you wrong!

I immediately made a b-line to my college Am.History book, "America: A Narrative History 5th Edition" by George Tindall and David Shi.

This book, in fact, gives high estimates for the death counts - 80,000 killed in the blast in Hiroshima, including "thousands of soldiers", and 23 American prisoners of war. The death count rose to around 140,000 over the next 3 months. The book describes people "so painfully burned that their skin began to peel in large strips." The American threat of "prompt and utter destruction" is not being at all dowplayed here. It doesn't go into such detail on the aftermath of Nagasaki (Little Boy got about an entire page of discussion, but it lists 36,000 people killed in the initial blast.

But something nobody ever thinks of in this case were the firebombings detailed in this book. Raids on Tokyo and other major cities killed more than 500,000 people, and left 13 million homeless. More than 100,000 civilians died in the firebombing of Tokyo in march of 1945.


Is my book leaving anything out?

"History is written by the victors" is a flawed concept. The "losers" have their own version. too, and in an era of international publishing, things are closer to the truth than you may know.

And criticizing eye witness accounts? Are you familiar with the weight of an eye-witness account in a murder trial? Did you know that a single, reliable, eye-witness has about as much authority as the whole of the forensic evidence against them? Are you aware of the significance of a corroborated allibi? Despite what forensic shows would have you believe (I watch those things religeously, btw), most murder trials are taken care of in a day or two, carried on the shoulders of multiple eye-witnesses.
Three independant, reliable eye-witnesses? That's as good as a verdict.

I'm not saying our history books aren't wrong in many places, but they aren't nearly as wrong as you think they are.

 

[Fafnir]

Wasn't the point of the atomic bomb to kill civilians, though? Its not like a city would only have military in it.

The point was to blow everything up. The real message was 'yeah, we can do this shit, and if you don't give up, we've got plenty more.' The fact that civilians were involved probably had minimal priority, other then a way to get alot of attention.

 

[arcthemonkey]

The point of the bomb was to deliver on the threat - Surrender, or face "prompt and utter destruction"

 

[neomatrixjc]

History is a valuable aspect of our times, Those key figures in our time may have not been special to anyone, but they helped changed society for its best, if they have not done what they did, then our very fabric of thought of what we do know and claim to our own thoughts, would ultimately be changed, it is important to know our history, and use that history in order to help form the future, and not let anything bad come back to repeat itself, People need to understand that History is what makes our future, with out the past there would be no present, and if there is no present then how can we ultimately have a future, some things in history are not important but the key ones listed for the start of the topic are ones to remember because of there influences in our society

 

[kaze950]

but they helped changed society for its best

I don't know if this could be said about Hitler or Stalin.

 

[Lene]

Even if teachers are deciding what history to teach, it still can't be as bad the revisionist history I got spoon-fed where everyone was happy, settlers didn't bring diseases that killed off the natives, slavery never happened in Canada, and anything else that shows the system isn't perfect.

Co-signed x 100. kaze, what you've linked to doesn't sound good, but really History education (aka the British lovefest) in Western countries is worse than you may even think.

You have to wait until college before the average student could get exposed to anything from a different perspective.

Like I said in an earlier post, trim the fat and teach what really matters.

The thing about history is that it's not so easy to decide "what really matters".

 

[arcthemonkey]

While my experiance has anecdotal value at best, I still don't believe history is as bad as it's being made out to be, and aside from a few extreme examples, nobody has been able to demonstrate otherwise.

 

[Lene]

Well considering my anecdotal evidence would be a AP US History teacher who was a slavery apologist or that world history class that was, for some strange reason, entirely in spanish (I passed because I know enough spanglish to survive Miami). Basically, I've had a bad experience with history. XD

Education in the US is pretty spotty when it comes to History or Social Studies (whatever they're calling it). This may be off topic but, have you ever watched that Are you Smarter Than A 5th Grade show? They had world history questions on that which boggled my mind...because I know I didn't experience World History until the 9th grade. I just got the wonders of Manifest Destiny (Trail of Tears and the like omitted) ad infinitum for 8 years. Except for Feburary. Then we'd get the "OMG remember when racism still existed?" party line.

Lets put it this way: I'm not exactly sure who Winston Churchill is. And Stalin rings a small bell but I wouldn't win any game shows with my knowledge regarding why people care about him. Mind you, I wouldn't say that I was sleeping in any of these classes either, so make of it what you will.

 

[Andy6000]

I'll make of it that wow people's history classes are terrible.

I mean, I took an AP World History course in 10th grade, and I'd had history classes (conveniently called social studies for some reason) from the 4th grade, and I think that I knew who Churchill and Stalin were as early as those classes started. They're big names in recent history.

I can't say I am the foremost bloody scholar in history, but from how little random people know about it, it almost seems true. Every history class I've had so far was presented in a (from my view) non-biased, and truthful viewpoint. The trail of tears happened, it was bad, lots of native-americans died, just because andrew jackson needed to appease settlers. We discussed what would have been the RIGHT decision on Andrew Jackson's part (in complete morality, they would've stayed there, in helping the nation he should've pushed them out, but at least given them supplies along the bloody way).

Now, I can't say I know all that much about Canadian history other than the basics, since I've taken a good lot more US History classes than World History classes (not to mention world history spreads it pretty thin since you're getting the everywhere, every time version), but I'm relatively sure I wasn't spared the facts just for a 'pretty history' as an apparent lot of people get.

Churchill, Hitler, and Stalin are important figures in world history, they should most likely be mandatory, considering if you cover world war 2, you had best cover them, and if it's a history class, you'd best be covering world war 2.

 

[Lene]

Did I ever do World War 2 in AP history? I don't think we made it that far in my class. We barely reached WW1, if we didn't stop just before. But I passed the AP exam, so I guess the college board didn't think I needed to know that for a balanced historical education. (Actually from what I heard, my year all the questions were skewed towards early US history).

I'll admit the fact that yeah AP history was a little more in-depth and it tried to give us the facts, my teachers incompetence aside, but AP history is supposed to be college level history. If you didn't take it, you were saddled with the very one-sided, cleaned up version of history. *shrugs*

 

[arcthemonkey]

I'm in the same boat as Andy. I've never had a moment where I was like, "Wait, my history teacher said this -" I developed a saying in 7th grade though, based on history class - "Humanity sucks". I learned all about the trail of tears (although, I never heard it called that until after high school), the witch trials (emphasis on the fact that they weren't trials by any modern definition), and every other attrocity committed by our nation and everyone elses too. People always talk about revisionist history, painting this picture of history teachers telling kids that the indians were NEVER killed, and blacks and whites and jews have always gotten along just fine. I watched Amistad in the 8th or 9th grade in history class. It's not like we just glanced over the civil war or world war 2.

I came out of high school bitter ashamed to be human, not thinking I was welcome in harlem and that it's neat how native americans have their own nations. I really don't think it was just my schools.

(Note that I don't really remember much school before 4th grade, but I don't recall being shocked with contradictiory news later on down the line.)

College history (and some of my humanities classes, to a greater degree) was what I am wont to call "peer editted" in the sense that if our teacher started feeding us bullshit, someone would call him out on it. I mean, we had our share of... interesting persons insisting that the moon landing was a hoax, and they shouldn't be lying to us about it. This wasn't some hoity toity christian school either, this was Southern Oregon University in Ashland Oregon, where wearing a christian t-shirt would get you cussed out and threatened by the girl at the food-court (Happened to me FOUR times, not just at the food-court - once was from a girl I walked past in the hall on my way to work, once by the food-court girl, once by the Clubs director in student government, and once by a mostly naked man outside the Stevenson Union - it only stopped because I stopped wearing clothing with images or text alltogether), and having a Bush supporting bumper sticker would get your car vandalized (Also happened). I'm fairly certain I was the only heterosexual republican in the entire city. The people there were more interested in justice and the shady "truth" that, if it meant stopping traffic for 45 minutes during mid-terms, and assualting the police for moving their children out of the middle of the road, then so be it.

If our history teacher was feeding us revisionist bullshit, Ashland would have pointed it out.